I’ve posted here because I didn’t want to clutter up the tournament thread with waffle. To avoid earning the title of “Half Baked” Tournament I have decided to put a lot of time into developing my idea for a “simulated” loose surface racing series and would appreciate any feedback and suggestions from the community.
The entry guidelines will be the b*****d child of a Rally America Open Class and WRC drunken one night stand. They are still under development, but basically engine size restrictions, weight restrictions, must be based on a production car model with monocoque shell must have gravel tyres and off-road sump guard etc.
Which brings me to my questions:
Would people be interested in competing?
Should real-world rally tracks be replicated or keep in character and create original windy courses from each of the Automation regions? How many stages per round etc?
Should the three rounds of the tournament be staggered throughout the year like WRC or occur all at once?
Does anybody have any ideas on how to simulate a 34mm turbo restrictor in-game? I thought limiting the turbo pressure would work?
Would people be willing to work with me as track designers, car scrutinisers and timekeepers to keep the series fresh and fair?
Would people prefer a single vehicle series were competitors simply “submit an engine and tune a specific car” or rather pit their best vehicles against the clock to see who comes out on top?
Annoyingly by basing it on production models I’ve shot myself in the foot and made my Switchblade RS rally car ineligible to compete (Unless somebody wants to put a road version into production) I should have thought this through a lot more.
Any feedback and suggestions are welcome…I have broad shoulders…I can take it.
2: Personally I think we should have Automation world tracks to celebrate the up coming light campaign
3: the problem with staggering it throughout the year is you do not know what may happen IRL and this may change being able to hold the challenge
4: For the turbo restriction why can’t we simply use a 0.34 A/R ratio I know its not the same but just an idea
5:I can’t do tracks but I can help with scrutineering and time keeping, however I do not think people will cheat and it would involve multiple people having to download the car files this adds the possibility of conflicting files etc
6: I would like to see a limited number of car bodies and a limit on the type, displacement and valve arrangement of the engine, or 3/4 different types of engines that we can download from you and tune ourselves
other than that sounds awesome maybe have 2 classes for hardcore and non-hardcore racers to simulate pro and amatuer racing
Please don’t enforce a restricted AR ratio, that doesn’t actually model for restricted boost like a plate would, plus, 0.34AR is ridiculously low and the turbo will be pretty much useless for all performance applications
It’d probably be best to restrict total boost instead. OR if you wanted to get fancy with it, restrict the size of the compressor. That too will restrict total potential boost.
So what if we use a 1.0 A/R with a 34mm compressor?
Fuel system should also be regulated somehow
and can we please use race intakes and exhaust (if n/a) If these are racing cars why not use racing parts)
Courses from the automation regions is much more awesome I think. I think 3 to 4 stages per round is probably enough, but that also depends if you want to do only 1 round per region or more rounds per region and how long you want the competition to go on.
I would like to completely build my own car and use that, but you can make the regulations in a way that you can only choose from certain bodies. For instance the wheel base has at least a certain length.
must be based on a production car model Means you need to check 2 cars instead of 1
Should real-world rally tracks be replicated No, not really, a time is a time, no matter where it’s been done
Should the three rounds of the tournament be staggered throughout the year like WRC or occur all at once? One round per week is a good standard
Would people be willing to work with me as track designers, car scrutinisers and timekeepers to keep the series fresh and fair? What you just asked is “if anybody wishes to run this challenge for me”, and the answer is “if somebody wanted he would have done it by now”
I won’t lie, groups of people running challenges has been done before. I know I was contemplating it with a couple of others and we even had most of the groundwork laid out. Then BRC happened and we decided not to do it anymore, because that was probably more than enough for the forum at the time.
Nope…what I asked is “Would people be willing to work with me?”
I can’t design tracks/stages but I can do the rest of the stuff, but in the event that a lot of people want to compete it would save one person (namely me) having to scrutinise dozens of cars to make sure they meet series spec and focus on managing the series timekeeping etc.
That is what an event host is usually subjecting him to when he hosts an event though. And what you’ve stated is just the tip of the iceberg. Usually half the cars don’t meet the requirements and then are sent over for a second scrutineering… some do it 3-5 times. And then somebody remembers that he can add a turbo and meet the rules and he changes his car completely and sends a new one over, and it doesnt meet requirements and he sends 3-5 revisions afterwards. It’s a normal situation.
Instead of restrict the turbo size (which is a bad idea all around), you can restrict the intake to one throttle body + performance intake. At least that’s what I do when I do rally cars.
If you are expecting over two dozen entries, then it is considered fairly standard to offer limited or no revisions. Unless you’re Der Bayer, and you’ve written an app that automatically updates and scrutinises files, but that’s something that very few people can do because it requires access to source code.
So let’s just say that if you’re expecting a lot of entries, you should feel free to impose restrictions on number of revisions. You just have to be strict that if a user gets it wrong, they’re disqualified.
How about putting a minimum weight and limit power to certain amount per kg.
For example, 1200kg minimum weight, and 0.34 hp /kg (at 1200 the max power should be 408 hp). Maybe you should do some testing to find what suits better for competitiveness.
Engines, maybe up to 2L and 4 cylinders for turbocharged cars and up to 3.5 L and 6 cylinders for NA? Just an idea. Or just use turbo engines, because the current turbos have a drivability penalty over NA.
Catalytic converter pretty much everyone will use the 3 way super flowy.
8 foot 2 inches is awfully specific, it comes down to just under 2.5m. Even going with 2.5m wheelbase and under, this makes me a bit nervous and wonder why this is the case, because it’d limit a lot of the bodies available to the contest.
Certainly I can see that a car with a wheelbase of >3m doesn’t make much sense in rally, but is there a specific reason you wish to impose this restriction? I’d suggest 3m and under myself, because the only bodies that are 3m and above are all the 4 door sedans, wagons, trucks and other massive barges. But there are some decently sized and perfectly reasonable cars that have wheelbase of, for example, 2.56m, and those’d be excluded.
Sillyworld’s solution for power limitation is not a bad one. It would however mean that almost everybody would opt to use NA unless fuel economy becomes important (which, for this kind of rallying, it most certainly is not). I’d favour for allowing NA engines to be somewhere around maximum 1.4x the maximum displacement of the turbo engines. However, with restrictions on the turbo, I’m not sure that’d be fair, and I haven’t playtested this yet.
I myself would vote for a displacement restriction, over HP restriction. This way the game will be about seeing what the power to driveable ratio is, which is more complex and more fun.
No restrictions on Drive Type
3. In a rally that is an “awd, or you lose, so it’s not really necessary”
Muffler Bypass Valves are forbidden
4. Not a necessary rule since you don’t have a sound level restriction
5. It only adds weight anyway
At least one muffler must be applied
6. You’re limiting us to any sort of muffler, that is not really a limitation, especially since there’s no price limit
Rim size must not exceed 15"
Tyre width must not exceed 185mm
Brake disc size must not exceed 300mm
7. You can’t squeeze brakes bigger than 300mm into 15" wheels anyway, one of those rules isn’t necessary
8. 185mm? Why are we limited to a bicycle tire on a set of rules that does not prohibit me from running 1000hp?
Interior Type must be Sport
9. With no restriction on quality this will go into -15 quality the first thing. If you want to restrict us by weight you should just restrict us by weight.
There’s no minimum safety rating
There’s no minimum weight rating
There’s no maximum power or P/W output rating
There’s no year restriction for this competition
There’s no reliability requirement
There’s no budget restriction
Those are just off the top of my head. The rules are also very restrictive on many parameters, so prepare to check each one of those parameters on each car sent in. There’s a reason I run 5 requirements only in my series, makes less work for me.
I should have thought this through a lot more.
